Ngo 1 Dustin Ngo Professor Lynda Haas Writing 37 27 October 2013 Horror and Society Movies have gone

a long way since the first motion picture shown in 1878, expanding in both length and genres by a significant amount. Genres have increased from one to many, with one of more popular genres being thriller and horror. According to literary scholar Kyle Bishop's "Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance, [h]orror films function as barometers of societys anxieties, and zombie movies represent the inescapable realities of unnatural death while presenting a grim view of the modern apocalypse through the scenes of deserted streets, piles of corpse, and gangs of vigilantes(17). Not only did the amount of genres expand, so did the creation of sub-genres. One of the sub-genres of horror includes the zombie and supernatural paranormal activities. The zombie genre usually revolves around the event of one possible way that the world could end or in other words, one way how a catastrophe can cause society's law and order to crash down amongst itself. As stated in the name of the genre, zombies are the catalyst to portray this post-apocalyptic event. Dawn of the Dawn was one of those films that follows this genre and sub-genre and was released on March 28th, 2004. This film was a remake of George A. Romero Dawn of the Dead (1978) and was directed by Zach Snyder, written by James Gunn, and starred Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, and Jake Weber. In this Dawn of the Dead, it is simply a story following the main character, Ana, and the rest of group with their struggles for survival against both the undead as well as other survivors in a mall in Milwaukee in the search of an infected-free zone in order to achieve normality once again. One

Ngo 2 of the few classic conventions that allowed the movie to be viewed as horror apocalyptic film was the debate of killing an infected loved one. Not only did Snyder use common conventions for the zombie sub-genre but also used a unique convention of introducing the audience to how the apocalypse began to distinguish it from other zombie-genre films. Conventions in movies are usually the distinguishing factors that allow each one to be categorized into their specific genre. In a zombie-based apocalyptic world, zombies are portrayed as hideous monsters that are infected with some sort of micro-organism and are spread through flesh-to-flesh contact. The typical and popular trend in a zombie apocalyptic world usually leads to the convention of a loved one becoming infected. This common convention often leads to confliction of ethical morality or basically questions how humane can a human be if an infected loved one needs to be killed or left behind for the better of the group. There were many scenes that portrayed this confliction as many of the main characters became infected one-by-one through the film starting off with Vivian, Luis, Luda, Andy, Steve, C.J., and lastly Michael. To specify on one scene, it would be at the very end of the film when everyone thought that everyone was safe on sound on the moat, Michael, one of the main characters, was bitten and he knew he had to be killed because he was infected. This was especially hard on Ana as she recently fell in love with and now she had to leave him. How this convention is connected to the zombie sub-genre is to allow the audience to see the struggle of the group of survivors in an environment where mankind is threated. There is a reason in which people would want to watch these types of zombie genres where mankind is on the brink of extinction. In Stephen Kings article, Why We Crave Horror, he discusses how us humans seem to enjoy watching things that out of the normal society standards by saying, The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. Not only is this convention

Ngo 3 displayed in both Dawn of the Dead but also other zombie movies such as 28 Days Later, I am Legend, or Shaun of the Dead to show that this convention is rather common in other zombie genre films. In every movie, there has to be some unique or different convention that sets each film apart from the others. The unique convention presented in Dawn of the Dead that set this movie apart from others was how the movie was set up at the beginning. The film started off with something that many zombie sub-genre films do not do and that is showing how the society was before the zombie apocalypse outbreak occurred. This scene showed how Anas neighborhood was before and after the breakout started. Right after, the director decides to input a scene of Ana driving around the disordered and panic-filled neighborhood, with a unique type of background music that no other scene uses, placing the camera in many point of views in order to capture the full destruction and confusion in society. The director did this by switching the point of view every so often, changing it sometimes from first person to third person and third person but in different angles being from the left or right or in front. Not only did it show this change between many points of view but it also showed the audience how chaotic and destructive humans can be without society enforcing law and order. By having this scene, it provided a smoother transition event to event throughout the entire movie rather than having an unexplained beginning of where and how the zombie apocalypse began like Zombieland or I am Legend. Dawn of the Dead received many positive reviews with one stating, [i]t astonishingly mixed realism, horror, suspense, comedy, action and drama that's rarely seen for its genre. (GiGAHEART) This film follows many common conventions of the horror and zombie genre that many similar films followed with one of them being the debate of killing a loved or family member. Not only did Snyder use multiple common zombie conventions to make his film stand

Ngo 4 out but he also used a unique convention that allowed his film to stand out from the other similar films. Even though this movie is quite old with its release being on 2004, the conventions used to portray this film as a horrible and zombie genre are still being used in similar genre films shown today in the year of 2013.

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Work Cited Bishop, Kyle William. Dead Man Still Walking. N.p.: Heldref Publications, 2009. Print. GiGAHEART. "Hands down the BEST Zombie Apocalypse MOVIE EVER MADE." IMDb. IMDb.com, 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. King, Stephen. Why We Crave Horror Movies. Danse Macabre. New York: Gallery Books, 2010. 1-3 Wood, Rocky. "What Is Horror Fiction?" Horror Writers Association. Horror Writers Association, 2009. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Wright, Will. "The First Movie Ever Made: A History of Film Firsts." Yahoo Contributor Network. Yahoo! Voices, 3 Dec. 2007. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.